Poems by Mary Oliver
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There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
She sends me news of blue jays, frost,
She steps into the dark swamp
My father, for example,
Whispering to each handhold, "I'll be back,"
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
At Great Pond
When the blackberries hang
Needing one, I invented her -
Over the local stations, one by one,
Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
In April
He picks his pond, and the soft thicket of his world.
Three miles through the woods
We enter
Cold now.
It is possible, I suppose that sometime
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
Where the path closed
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
1.
I am watching the white gannets
In the afternoon I watched
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
So heavy
It fills you with the soft
Who doesn’t love
Something
Last night
The oaks shone
I have been thinking
His beak could open a bottle,
Every summer
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
Every day
All my life,
This morning
Under the leaves, under
Blue and dark-blue
Every morning
Mushrooms
I tied together
Next time what I'd do is look at
On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
The mosquito is so small
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
Once, in summer
The spirit
What men build, in the name of security, is built of straw.
And now as the iron rinds over
I thought the earth remembered me,
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
Last night, an owl
1
On a summer morning
I used to imagine him
Chunky and noisy,
It was spring
You can
That sweet flute John Clare;
"Make of yourself a light"
All summer I made friends
The dark things of the wood
The first fish
Listen, whatever it is you try
One day you finally knew
The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
And I have seen,
Night after night
There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
All summer
Who made the world?
Have you ever seen
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
We must begin to catch hold of everything
Now I see it--
1
What is so utterly invisible
When death comes
Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
All night
Hello, sun in my face.
You do not have to be good.
How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout